By Denise Roland 

Drug giant Sanofi SA has entered the race to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus, joining a handful of big and small drug makers, and teams of university researchers, looking for a way to prevent its spread.

Sanofi said it would revive research into a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, an illness caused by a related coronavirus. That work, responding to an outbreak in the early 2000s, was carried out by a small company that Sanofi later acquired. It was shelved as the SARS epidemic wound down, but will now serve as the starting point for a vaccine against the new coronavirus.

There are no vaccines or treatments proven to combat the new coronavirus. Several small drugmakers, including Moderna Inc., Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Novavax Inc., as well as Johnson & Johnson, are already publicly trying to develop a vaccine. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia are also working on a potential vaccine to prevent Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.

Gilead Sciences Inc. is separately investigating whether one of its experimental antiviral drugs could be effective against the virus.

Sanofi is a big player in the vaccines business and its infrastructure, as well as its earlier SARS research, could help it in its latest effort. The technology it plans to use in the new vaccine already forms the basis of an approved flu vaccine, reducing the likelihood of safety stumbles.

The new coronavirus has so far infected more than 72,500 people and killed more than 1,850, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of those cases, and nearly all the fatalities, have been in China, where the virus originated.

Sanofi said its efforts are being supported by the U.S. government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an office responsible for preparing the nation against public-health threats like pandemics and bioterrorism. Sanofi, which has used U.S. funds for its research into a pandemic flu vaccine, didn't provide financial details of the collaboration.

David Loew, head of vaccines at Sanofi, said a vaccine could be made widely available, at least for emergency use, in three to four years. He expects the vaccine to start human testing in a year to 18 months.

That extended time frame explains why some promising vaccines never get finished. Sanofi started work on a Zika vaccine at the height of that outbreak but pulled the plug after the threat retreated and the U.S. government scaled back funding support.

"You don't know if viruses are going to become established [or] if they'll go away," said John Shiver, head of vaccine research and development at Sanofi. "Even if it doesn't turn out to be something that sustains interest, it's worth that effort to go do it."

Write to Denise Roland at Denise.Roland@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2020 13:07 ET (18:07 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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